ria, Michael [62] was saluted with the tears and
acclamations of the people; and Pope Gregory the Seventh exhorted the
bishops to preach, and the Catholics to fight, in the pious work of his
restoration. His conversations with Robert were frequent and familiar;
and their mutual promises were justified by the valor of the Normans and
the treasures of the East. Yet this Michael, by the confession of the
Greeks and Latins, was a pageant and an impostor; a monk who had fled
from his convent, or a domestic who had served in the palace. The fraud
had been contrived by the subtle Guiscard; and he trusted, that after
this pretender had given a decent color to his arms, he would sink, at
the nod of the conqueror, into his primitive obscurity. But victory was
the only argument that could determine the belief of the Greeks; and
the ardor of the Latins was much inferior to their credulity: the Norman
veterans wished to enjoy the harvest of their toils, and the unwarlike
Italians trembled at the known and unknown dangers of a transmarine
expedition. In his new levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and
promises, the terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some
acts of violence might justify the reproach, that age and infancy
were pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting
prince. After two years' incessant preparations the land and naval
forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel, or extreme promontory, of
Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his
side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of the emperor Michael.
Thirteen hundred knights [63] of Norman race or discipline, formed
the sinews of the army, which might be swelled to thirty thousand [64]
followers of every denomination. The men, the horses, the arms, the
engines, the wooden towers, covered with raw hides, were embarked on
board one hundred and fifty vessels: the transports had been built in
the ports of Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the
republic of Ragusa.

[Footnote 59: In the first expedition of Robert against the Greeks,
I follow Anna Comnena, (the ist, iiid, ivth, and vth books of the
Alexiad,) William Appulus, (l. ivth and vth, p. 270-275,) and Jeffrey
Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 13, 14, 24-29, 39.) Their information is
contemporary and authentic, but none of them were eye-witnesses of the
war.]

[Footnote 60: One of them was married to Hugh, the son of Azzo, or Axo,
a marqu